Box 72, Item 3: Two drafts of An alternate angle on the humanities

Box 72, Item 3: Two drafts of An alternate angle on the humanities

Two typescript drafts, handwritten emendations.

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The University of Queensland's Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291, Box 72, Item 3

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AN ALTERNATIVE ANGLE ON THE HUMANITIES

by Richard Routley

Higher education in the humanities, beyond the basics of literacy,
has been under attack for a Long time.

This is partly because it costs

money and public resources that might be otherwise invested (e.g. for
technological education, for industrial assistance or subsidization);

it is also because education in the humanities can lead to dissatisfac­
tion with established ways, and criticism of them^i.e. "rocking the boat .
While it is impossible to develop a definitive argument for extensive

education in the humanities—any more than it is possible to mount a

conclusive argument against it—a telling case can nonetheless be made.
There tends to be little dispute about some of the things
humanities' subjects teach, much better than other areas:

competence

and skills in composition and communication, for example, both essential

for many roles in modern technological society.

University courses Ln

humanities teach these things, mostly as a by—product of the other topics
they rightly focus upon.

It is about subjects and topics beyond this usually conceded
minimal level that questions are asked:

Why should universities teach,

or teach so much of, typical humanities' subjects

English, other

languages and literatures, linguistics, history and philosophy

when a university education in these areas affords direct access to

but few jobs, and is, it is assumed, inessential for most day-to-day

^The social sciences, which are sometimes grouped with the
humanities, have been excluded from consideration; that is, humanities
is being used in its narrower modern sense. This artificial separation
sharpens the issues; for the case for university, or at least polytechnic

education in economics, for instance, is straightforward in much the way
that forestry and engineering is.

2

living?

It is obvious enough why they should be offered and taught:

because they comprise a significant part of knowledge.

But this reply

does not meet the complaint that they are still too much taught.
The older response to this type of challenge appealed to the
importance of culture, to "the utilization of the intellect as an

end", to the desirability of having cultivated and civilized men and
women in the community.

Higher education in the humanities was taken

to be distinctively fitted to confer these virtues.

The older response

has force, but it has to meet the tedious objection that much
humanities' education merely delivers "dreamers who can converse well

over cocktails;" moreover, it needs supplementation if it is to be

sustained nowadays.
In particular, it requires underpinning by an argument, independently
called for, which counteracts the narrow industrial utilitarianism

into the framework of which answers are all too often supposed to fit.
According to this type of industrial philosophy, university education

is important if it contributes directly to such things as providing
(typically at public expense) a technically skilled but not surplus

workforce, if it helps to enlarge the industrial base, enables
expansion or improvements in sales and marketing of industrial products,
and so on—taking it for granted that all these industrial activities
are worthwhile.

But the further and deeper issue is:

these industrial activities and makes them valuable?

What justifies

To put it

bluntly, these activities are valuable not for the profits they

inequitably distribute, but rather for what they add to the communities
they should serve, in the way of net value (such as a richer life for

members of the community, making some allowance for the costs
involved, by way of pollution, despoiliation of urban, rural and

- 3 -

and natural environments, etc.)-

And it is to these same values that

higher education in the humanities should also answer—not, to consider

a worst case, to the direct demands of a damaging and undesirable

industry furnishing dangerous or alienated jobs.
If we do look at these more ultimate values, the attainment

of rich and rewarding and varied lifestyles, then it is evident, without
much elaboration, that higher education in the humanities has much to

recommend it, that people whose lives are fuller and richer and who
add to the variety and culture of the communities in which they live
will be produced by humanities education at its best., that the older

argument can be pushed through.

There are, however, further responses, reinforcing the older
response, which it is now necessary to indicate.

All the older

response generally implies is that an educated person can simply

be pumped full of a stuff called "culture"—a supply of allegedly
factual information, views, and prejudices on this or that area.
What higher education in the humanities teach s at its best

is

much more, and more important than this: namely, the acquisition
of a range of critical and analytical skills of practical value.
These include such analytical skills as

being able to dissect an

issue or problem, to break it down to its components and determine
the basic assumptions, to work out the presuppositions made, to draw
out the implications of the matter, and to view the problem from
various angles.

They include such critical skills as the ability

to assess a problem or work analysed; for instance the ability to
criticise the assumptions made and to locate and evaluate alternatives

to them, to weigh evidence, to see faults in arguments and fallacies
when they occur, and so on.

They also include such skills as the

4

ability to obtain further information and to apply the methods, and
to research new areas and new problems independently of a teacher.

In short, the humanities, properly done, teach an analytical and
critical method, and above all the ability "to reason well in all

matters".
As an integral part of this, they should teach the awareness

of alternatives, an appreciation of alternative situations, cultures,
and worlds.

A first step in the critical evaluation of an institution,

for example, is often the awareness of alternatives, that things do

not have to be exactly the way the institution is, but that there
are alternative situations where the institution is variously modified

or even eliminated.

It is not difficult to see how depth education

in history or the languages leads to an appreciation of options, by

placing the student in contexts where things are done and seen differently.

Philosophy and parts of modern linguistics, specifically semantics,
take this whole enterprise much further and now, in the explicit
investigation of possible worlds, render it systematic.

Indeed,

a significant part of the history of philosophy has consisted in
the envisaging and following through of certain such alternatives.
And such a devising of alternative situations is tied intimately

to reasoning.

For example, an argument is valid if there are no

alternative situations where its premisses hold but its conclusion
does not.
Finally, the critical method, in particular the ability to

discern alternatives, helps people to become aware of their own
intellectual assumptions, and where necessary to change them.

Thus

too, it leads to an intellectual flexibility and adaptability, which

is increasingly important for modern, practical problem-solving,

- 5 -

and for the adjustments in lifestyle many of us may confront.

Systematic philosophy teaches critical reasoning explicitly;
a central part of philosophy is the assessment of arguments and

the detection of fallacies.

Other humanities' disciplines teach

the analytic and critical method also, though less directly, and

more by example.

English does it through the medium of literary

criticism; languages, in analogous ways, by the analysis and critical
evaluation of "foreign" literature and the critical examination of
the practices, customs, and thought of a culture with a different

language and literature.

A good language education can not only

introduce people to alternatives, but can in the process reveal

to them their own cultural assumptions, and so open the way to

alternative possibilities they have not previously considered.
So it is also with history, which involves similar interpretative
skills in the investigation of far-removed societies.

What is the virtue of critical and analytical reasoning,
of being able to think in a concentrated, systematic imaginative

way, of being able to approach problems from several angles?

What,

in particular, is the relevance of these skills to that obtrusive
part of the practical world, business, commerce, etc.?

Not only

will there be many problems for firms and services to handle and
try to resolve, problems often best dealt with using just such

skills, but the problems arising will increasingly be of a different

character, of a type for which purely technological educations are
inappropriate or inadequate, and where new alternatives will have

to be devised, seriously considered, and sometimes adopted.

newer problems include two important overlapping types:
mental problems and resource problems.

These

environ­

The resource problems are

- 6 -

due to increasing scarcity and escalating prices of materials,
especially oil^but also lumber, etc.

As a result, industry and

government, as well as the private individual, will have to be re­

conciled to, and make, very considerable adaptations and adjustments

(of kinds still to be determined), to adopt alternative practices
and solutions to problems on a wide range of fronts.

The environ­

mental problems arise because present and historical practices are

often damaging, sometimes destructive, to the environment or the

people who live in it, and because these practices, such as rapacious
forestry and injurious pollution, are not going to be tolerated^
indefinitely, but will require much modification at the very least.
In each case, resource and environmental, much innovation will be
essential, much new and alternative thinking required, far better

if it is analytical and critical, and so does not lead
to a compounding of old and bad technological fixes.

In sum, the

problems to be faced, many of them of considerable complexity,

are of a different character:

successful resolution of them, where

it can be accomplished, and superior decision-making will more and

more demand substantial and imaginatively-deployed analytical and
critical skills.

The requisite skills are inculcated in a good

education in the humanities.

Of course, some of these skills are acquired in the theore­
tical sciences—though the critical skills usually in a lesser way,

much as compositional skills are acquired in a lesser way in the
sciences.

What further distinguishes most of the humanities is the

way they relate to, and take account of, humans—of people as people

and not merely as statistics.

Those educated in the humanities

tend to have a sensitivity to people, and understanding of them,

-7 -

that technologists often lack.

So it is that they can introduce

important elements into problem-solving, due respect for persons
(and not mere fobbing off by public relations exercises), that

technological resolutions of problems frequently, but inadmissibly,
neglect.

A corollary of all this is that there is a sound case for

deploying people well educated in the humanities more widely in

organizations engaged in research and problem solving.

It would be

rash to pretend that either industry, governments, and so on

(the potential employers) on the one side, or the universities (the
potential suppliers of humanities graduates) on the other, are

entirely ready for this already initiated scenario.

It is not that

universities do not always teach humanities at their best (that could
hardly be expected), but that the skills and methods called for,
analytical and critical, are often not sought and are sometimes
deliberately devalued.

Sometimes indeed the critical method is

forgotten and university education—not just in the humanities—

degenerates into something approaching a brainwashing process,
reinforcing prevailing practices, attitudes and ideologies instead

of indicating serious weaknesses in prevailing practices and
revealing the range of alternatives open in one way or another.

Nor do universities make much effort, so far, to prepare students
for the possibility that the critical skills they acquire may be

put into practice outside class assignments, not just in their
day-to-day living, but in the workplace and in their attempts to

enter it (e.g. by being duly prepared for interviews).

There is

also apparently some resistance by humanities' students to

8 -

entering employment in industry, owing to a blanket condemnation
of industry^ instead of a more discriminating attitude which makes due
criticism where it is warranted.

on the other side as well.

Faults of similar magnitude appear

For example, even where senior management

does recognize the modern relevance of the skills humanities'
students acquire, personnel selection staff are usually unequipped

to select for such skills.

A further corollary is that an integral part of a modern

technological education is a training in the humanities.

2

'Both Professor Raymond Bradley of Simon Fraser University
and the Editor of this Newsletter made many useful suggestions
which have been incorporated in the text. The main quotations
are from Cardinal Newman's The Idea of a University.

/

AN ALTERNATIVE ANGLE ON THE HUMANITIES
by Richard Routley*

Higher education in the humanities, beyond the basics of

literacy, has been under attack for a long time, in part because it
costs money and public resources that might be otherwise invested

(e.g. for technological education, for industrial assistance and
subsidization), but also because it can lead to (sometimes warranted)

dissatisfaction with established ways and criticism of them (e.g.
to "rocking the boat").

While it is impossible to develop a definitive

argument for extensive education in the humanities—any more than it
is possible to mount a conclusive argument against it—a telling
caye can nonetheless be made.
About some of the things humanities* subjects teach,
much better than other areas such as the sciences and technologies,

competence and skills in composition and communication—essential

for many roles in modern technological society—there tends to be

little dispute.

University courses in humanities teach these things,

sometimes, initially, directly, but more often as a by-product of
the other topics they rightly focus upon.

It is about subjects and topics beyond this usually

conced ed minimal level that questions are asked:—Why should
universities teach, or teach so much of, typical humanities' subjects—
such as English, and other languages and literatures, linguistics,
history and philosophy^—when a university education in these areas

affords direct access to but few jobs, and is, it is assumed,

inessential for most day-to-day living?

It is obvious enough

'"The author is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities
and Senior Fellow in Philosophy at the Research School of Social
Sciences, Australian National University. He is visiting the University
of Victoria as a Canadian Commonwealth Fellow.

^The social sciences, which are sometimes grouped with the
humanities, have been excluded from consideration; that is, 'humanities'
is being used in its narrower modern sense.
This (artificial) separation
sharpens the issues; for the case for university, or at least polytechnic,
education in economics, for instance, is straightforward in much the way
that forestry and engineering is.

2 -

why they should be offered and taught:
cant part of knowledge.

because they comprise a signifi­

But this reply does not meet the complaint that

they are still too much taught.
The older response to this type of challenge appealed to the

importance of culture and of "the utilization of the intellect as an
end", of having cultivated and civilized men (and women) in the community,
higher education in the humanities being taken to be distinctively
fitted to confer, at least often, these virtues.
The older response has
force, but it has to meet the %ne^riiag objection that much humanities'

education merely delivers "god-damn dreamers who can converse well over

cocktails," and it needs supplementation if it is to be sustained

nowadays.

In addition, it requires underpinning by a move, independently
called for, which takes on the narrow industrial utilitarianism into
the framework of which answers are all too often supposed to fit.
According to this type of industrial philosophy, university education

is important if it contributes directly to such things as providing
(typically at public expense)

a technically skilled but not surplus

workforce, if it helps enlarge the industrial base, enables expansion
or improvements in sales and marketing of industrial products, and
so on—taking it for granted that all these industrial activities
are worthwhile.

But the further and deeper issue is what justifies

these industrial activities and makes them valuable when they are
(which is far from always the case).

To put it bluntly, they are

valuable not for the profits they inequitably distribute, but rather
for what they add to the communities they should serve, in the way

of net value (such as a richer life for members of the community,
making some allowance for the costs involved, by way of pollution,
despoiliation of urban, rural and natural environments, etc.).

And

it is to these values, that industrial activities themselves have
ultimately to answer, that higher education in the humanities should

also answer—not, to consider a worst case, to the direct demands
of a damaging and undesirable industry furnishing dangerous or
alienated jobs.

If we do look at these more ultimate values, the attainment

of rich and rewarding and varied lifestyles, then it is evident ,

- 3 -

/
without much elaboration, that higher education in the humanities has
much to recommend it., that people whose lives are fuller and richer

and who add to the variety and culture of the communities in which

they live will be produced by humanities education at its best, coat
the older argument can be pushed through.
There are, however, further responses, reinforcing the older

response, which it is now necessary to indicate.
response sometimes says, an educated

For all tae older

person can simply be pumped

full of a stuff called culture, a supply of (allegedly) factual
information, views, and also prejudices, on this or that area.
What higher education in the humanities, at its best, teaches is

much more, and more important than this; namely the acquisition

of a range of crff*Ktal and analytical skills of practical value.

These include such analytical skills as being able to dissect an
issue or problem, to break it down to^components and determine the

basic assumptions; to work out the presuppositions made, and to draw
out the implications of the matter; to view the problem from various

They include such critical skills as the ability to assess

angles.

critically a problem or w^rk analysed, for instance to criticise

the assumptions made and to locate and evaluate alternatives to

them, the ability to weigh evidence, to see faults in arguments and
fallacies when they occur, and so on.

They also include such skills

as the ability to obtain further information and to apply the methods,

to research independently of a teacher in new areas and on new problems.

In short, the humanities, properly done, teach an analytical and
critical method, and above all the ability "to reason well in all

matters".
As an integral part of this they (should) t.^ctch the aware­

ness of alternatives, an appreciation of alternative situations,

cultures, worlds.

A first step in the critical evaluation of an

institution, for example, is often the awareness of alternatives,

that things do not have to be exactly that way, the way the
institution is, but that there are alternative situations where the

institution is variously modified or even eliminated.

It is not

difficult to see how depth education in history or the languages leads
to an appreciation of alternatives, by placing the student in contexts

where things are done and seen differently.

Philosophy and parts

4

of modern linguistics (specifically semantics) take this whole enter­
prise much further and now, in the explicit investigation of (possible)

worlds, render it systematic:

but a significant part of the history

of philosophy has consisted (it can now be seen) in the envisaging
and following through of certain such alternatives.

And such a

devising of alternative situations is tied intimately to reasoning.
For example, whether an argument is valid or not is a matter of
there are not or are alternative situations where its premises hold
but its conclusion does not.

Finally, the critical method, in particular the ability to

discern alternatives, helps people to become aware of their own
intellectual assumptions, and where necessary to change them.

Thus

too it leads to an intellectual flexibility and adaptability, which

is increasingly important for modern, practical problem-solving and

for the adjustments in lifestyle many of us may confront.

Systematic philosophy teaches critical reasoning
explicitly:

a central part of philosophy is the assessment of

arguments and the detection of fallacies.

Other humanities'

disciplines teach the analytic and critical method also, though

less directly, and more by example.

English does it through, for

instance, the medium of literary criticism, languages in analogous
ways, by the analysis and critical evaluation of "foreign" literature

and the critical examination of the practices, customs, and thought
of a culture with a different language and literature.

A good

language education can not only introduce people to alternatives,
but can in the process reveal to them their own cultural assumptions,

and so open the way to alternative possibilities they have not

previously considered.

So it is also with history, which often

involves similar interpretative skills, e.g. in the investigation
of some period in the history of a society as far removed from
modern societies as that of ancient Athens.
What is the virtue, or relevance, of critical and analytical
reasoning, of being able to think in a concentrated, systematic
imaginative way, of being able to approach problems from several

angles?

What, in particular, is the relevance to that obtrusive

part of the practical world, business, commerce, etc.

Not only will

there be many many problems for firms and services to handle and

5

try to resolve, problems often best dealt with using just such skills,
but the problems arising will increasingly be of a different character,

of a type for which purely technological educations are inappropriate
or inadequate, and where new alternatives will have to be devised,
seriously considered and sometimes adopted.

These

newer problems

include two important (overlapping) types, environmental problems

and resource problems.

The resource problems are due to increasing

scarcity and escalating prices of materials, especially oil (but

also, e.g., lumber)—as a result of which industry and government
(as well as the private individual) will have to be reconciled to

and niaoke very considerably, adaptations and adjustments of kinds
still to be determined, to adopt alternative practices and solutions

to problems on a wide range of fronts.

The environmental problems

arise because present practices are frequently damaging,

*

-

'

1

destructive, to the environment or the people who live in it (e.g.

through pollution and effects such as cancer), and because these
practices, such as rapacious forestry and ser^oct^s pollution,

are not going to be tolerated indefinitely, but will require much

modification at the very least.

In each case, resource and environmental,

much, innovation will be essential, much new and alternative thinking

required, far better if it is analytical and critical, and so does
not lead, for example, to a compounding of old and bad technological

fixes.

In sum, the problems to be faced, many of them of considerable

complexity, are of a different character:

successful resolution of

them, where it can be accomplished, and superior decision-making
will more and more demand, among other things, substantial and

imaginatively-deployed analytical and critical skills.

The

requisite skills are inculcated in a good education in the humanities.

Of course, some of these skills are acquired in the

theoretical sciences—though usually in a m^rked^-lesser way, piuch
as compositional skills (which typically increase with further
training in the humanities) are acquired in a-de-eide<Hy lesser way

in the sciences.

What further distinguishes most of the humanities

is the way they relate to, and take account of, humans
people and not merely as statistics.

of people as

Those educated in the humanities

tend to have a sensitivity to people, and understanding of them, that

technologists often lack.

So it is that they can introduce importune

6 --

elements into problem-solving, due respect for persons (and not

mere fobbing off by public relations exercises), that technological
resolutions of problems frequently, but inadmissibly, neglect.

A corollary of all this is that there is a sound case for

deploying people well educated in the humanities more widely
in organizations engaged in research and problem solving.

It would

be rash to pretend that either industry, governments, and so on
(the potential employers) on the one side, or the universities

(the potential suppliers of humanities graduates) on the other,
are entirely ready for this already initiated scenario.

It is not

that universities do not always teach humanities at their best

(that could hardly be expected), but that the skills

and methods

called for, analytical and critical, are often (e.g. in language
ers) not sought and are sometimes (deliberately) devalued.

Sometimes indeed the critical method is forgotten and university

education—not just in the humanities—degenerates into something
approaching a brainwashing process, reinforcing prevailing practices,
attitudes and ideologies instead of indicating <

;

in prevailing practices and.the range of alternatives open in one way
A
or another. Nor do universities fticke much effort, so far, to

prepare students for the possibility that the. critical skills they
acquire may be put into practice outside class assignments, not
just in their day-to-day living, but in the workplace and in their

attempts to enter it (e.g. by being duly prepared for interviews).
There is also apparently some resistance by humanities' students

to entering employment in industry, owing to a blanket condemnation

of industry (not altogether unexpected given the performances and
attitudes of some industries), instead of a mere discriminating
attitude which makes due criticism where it is warranted.

of similar magnitude appear on the other side as well.

Faults

For example,

even where senior management does re&o<? nize the modern relevance
of the skills humanities' students acquire, personnel selection

staff (who often have a technological background) are usually
§
unequipped to select for such skills and reluctant to do so.

§Both Professor Raymond Bradley of Simon Fraser University and the

Editor of this Newsletter made many useful suggestions which have been
incorporated in the text.

The main quotations are from Cardinal

Newman' s Tire Idea of a University.